[Dogwalker]

I've just finished a baby rug I offered to make for someone.A shetland ewe fleece, a layer of other shetland fleece used for the wet felted backing,  It needed a bit of needle felting to tidy up some thin patches and then brushing up.

Hope she likes it, I always worry selling things online until I hear back from the recipient.

[Lesley Silvester]

Wow! That's lovely.

[in the hills]

Beautiful!

[Dogwalker]

It turned out well but I think it's a summer job next time, wet felting on pallets in the shed on a frosty morning wasn't the best idea.

[Lesley Silvester]

It turned out well but I think it's a summer job next time, wet felting on pallets in the shed on a frosty morning wasn't the best idea.

 

[fsmnutter]

That looks fantastic. I've tried something similar with my hebridean fleeces and really struggled to get the back to felt without felting the "good" side. Do you have any tips?

[Dogwalker]

I was sceptical when told how to do it but the only part that didn't work so well was the centre back where the fleece was already felted off the sheep.  That part the backing wool didn't fix to the fleece very well and had to be needle felt repaired afterwards.
How well does hebridean felt? This was shetland.I just laid it out on pallets covered in an old wool sheet, layered the carded clean fleece over it, covered with an old net curtain and wet felted.  I didn't wash the main fleece first, used it as it came from the sheep, skirted well obviously.Sorry, no other tips than that.

[fsmnutter]

Thank you, this may be my problem, I tried it on fleeces that were already felted over most of the fleece on the sheep's backs as I thought that would make it easier! Sounds like it would work better on unfelted fleeces if that bit didn't felt so well.

[Dogwalker]

It's supposed to be a way to make use of matted fleeces so you'd have thought that was ideal but perhaps  there's degrees of 'matted'.The sides of mine looked a lot nicer too before brushing and could have just been finger teased to remove vm whereas the centre back really needed to be brushed to get the bits out and make it look nice.